


so we will become a happy ending

by badritual



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst and Fluff, Canon Compliant, Canon-Compliant Castiel/Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester First Kiss, Dean Winchester's Abandonment Issues - Freeform, Don't copy to another site, Episode: s13e01 Lost and Found, Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Fairy Tales, First Kiss, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Not Beta Read, Storytelling, True Love's Kiss, love confessions of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:34:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29412003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badritual/pseuds/badritual
Summary: Dean had never given fairytales much thought as a kid, for a whole host of reasons.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 59





	so we will become a happy ending

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Destiel Valentine's or w/e!! I started this for an exchange but it wasn't working out so I just finished it off and decided to post it today.
> 
> Title from "Chariot," by Page France. 
> 
> **Additional Warnings/Notes:** Dean briefly thinks a mildly sexist thought. There's some widower arc grief and body prep too.

Dean had never given fairytales much thought as a kid, for a whole host of reasons. Mostly because he was a _guy_ , and because his childhood hadn’t had room for trivial shit like _fairytales_ and _bedtime stories_. Sam, on the other hand…

Sam’s childhood was different in some ways; Dean would read him stories before he tucked him into bed, or he’d spin tales out of his own fertile imagination. Hungry ghosts and goblins looking for little kids to eat, enchanted forests, poison apples, witches and spells and cursed shoes that dance their wearer to death. 

Some of it he’d actually seen himself hunting with Dad, some he’d read about when he was put on research duty, and some he’d dreamt about at night. Sam had never had a childhood without fantasy. Dean had seen to that himself. 

After he’d retrieved Sam from Stanford and they’d set off hunting together, Dean had picked up stories here and there during his research. He’d been particularly taken by princesses enchanted into sleep, waiting for a kiss from their one true love to wake them. If anyone asked, he’d never have been able to give them a single satisfactory answer. He just didn’t know. Maybe because the thought of eternal sleep was so uncomfortably close to death, and Dean himself had come close to dying plenty of times. Had even died a few times that he can remember, and a few hundred times that he can’t. Wouldn’t it have been nice for a simple kiss to wipe all that away? 

Dean used to like to think so. 

When Cas died his second—or maybe it was his third, fourth—death, Dean had gotten to his knees very carefully and scooped his body into his arms. He’d stumbled back into the cabin with Cas pressed against his chest. Sam had thumped up from the basement with reams of white sheets draped over one arm, hair and eyes wild. 

“Dean, do you need—” Sam started, but Dean had ignored him. 

He took Cas into the dining room and spread him out on the table where they’d all eaten a quick lunch hours before. Warm yellow curtains stirred faintly in front of windows that overlooked Cas’s death scene. 

“I need to be alone,” Dean said, eyes locked on Cas’s pale, slack face. 

“Oh, okay. Sure.” Sam left the sheets behind and backed away, tripping over his own feet in his haste.

Dean stared at Cas’s face, dragged his eyes down the length of the empty shell that had once contained him. He reached out, taking one of Cas’s limp hands in his own. It was cold and slack, no warmth or familiarity to be found. 

Dean gently laid Cas’s hand back down on the table. 

He remembered those old stories he’d perused during his many endless, mind-numbing hours of research and wondered. Images of fading ink and yellowed parchment flickered like candleflame in his memory. 

One particular passage haunted him like a spirit. 

_True love is the most powerful force in the universe, and has the ability to overcome all obstacles placed in its path. A true love’s kiss can repair what has been torn asunder by death and destruction. It can give color to the darkness, chase away shadows, and reshape the stars._

Dean bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. 

It was foolish, this need to believe in the power of stories. But what else did he have, now? 

He dropped his hand, opened his palm against his thigh, and rubbed at the coarse denim. And he kept staring at Cas’s unmoving form. 

Dean pulled a curtain down from its rod and draped it over Cas’s body. 

His gaze traced the bridge of Cas’s nose of its own volition, moving to the dark lashes that splayed over unnaturally pale cheeks. Then his eyes fell to Cas’s lips, parted slightly, the hint of a smile in the faint lines at the corners of his mouth. 

_Maybe_ , he thought, and leaned down, letting his hand rest over the bloody gap in the fabric of his rumpled white shirt. 

He brushed his lips over Cas’s slack mouth and tasted the salt of his own tears on his tongue.

And then he waited, breath caught in his throat. 

Nothing. 

Dean leaned back and watched. Waited. Cas didn’t move. His lungs didn’t suddenly fill with air, his heart didn’t stutter to life under Dean’s lightly shaking palm. He didn’t stir to life like a wind-up doll that’d only needed to have its key turned. 

Dean squeezed his eyes shut tight. They stung with salt that he refused admit were tears, even to himself.

Cas was dead and he wasn’t coming back. 

He had gone somewhere Dean couldn’t bring him back from. 

When Dean started feeling more like himself, he began the long, lonely process of preparing Cas for his funeral pyre. 

He filled a basin with warm, soapy water and grabbed a rag from the kitchen. Then he’d undressed Cas’s body and neatly folded the clothes, setting them on one of the chairs he’d dragged over to the table. 

Dean had lingered on the Enochian inked into Cas’s ribs, touching his fingers to his lips and then pressing them gently against the letters. Then he grabbed the rag, dipped it in the water, and moved to the foot of the table. 

He’d gently cradled Cas’s heels in his palm and washed his feet first, then moved methodically up the length of his body. He wasn’t sure what to do about his hair, so he dampened it with the rag and styled it the way Cas had usually worn his hair. When Dean leaned back to examine his handiwork, Cas looked almost like he was ready to jump off the table and throw on his suit and trench coat.

He didn’t and he wouldn’t, not ever again. 

Dean redressed him and wrapped him back up in his coat and covered him with one of the sheets Sam found. 

Then he left to build a pyre worthy of the man—angel, friend, brother, _more_ —Castiel had been.

* * *

_Once upon a time, there was a man. They called him the Righteous Man, but that name no longer fit him. He was just a man._

_He lived a good life, and when his time came he went to Heaven where Paradise was waiting for him._

_This man had all he could ever dream of. His parents and brother lived just down the road from him. His friends were always there with a smile and a beer whenever he should feel like visiting them at the Roadhouse._

_But he just couldn’t help but feel something was missing._

* * *

It’s around the third or fourth Earth-day that Dean starts getting genuinely worried that Cas might not actually be in Heaven or, God forbid, he’s been actively avoiding Dean. 

On that third—fourth—day, he goes off in search of Cas. 

He has a place out yonder, Bobby had said. He tends to a garden. He even has a cat. 

Dean tries to imagine Cas pruning rosebushes or petting a cat. He closes his eyes and tries to conjure Cas in front of him like he’d conjured up a bacon double cheeseburger—save the pickles—and a basket of fries on the drive back from the bridge with Sam. 

(The burger and fries had materialized right in his lap and he nearly drove off the road in surprise.)

When he blinks his eyes open, there’s no Cas standing in front of him, head canted in that familiar curious tilt. 

“Some heaven,” Dean mutters to the empty space. 

Something faint stirs on the breeze. It almost sounds like the fluttering of wings. 

He’s gotten used to being disappointed, though, so he doesn’t dare let himself hope it’s Cas. It’s probably a bird or something. Not that he has anything against birds, per se. 

When he turns back toward the cabin, Cas is waiting there on the porch in a faded Led Zeppelin tour tee and blue jeans torn at the knees. He looks like something out of Dean’s teenage fantasies, all tousled hair, soft lips, and glowing blue eyes. 

Dean pinches himself on the arm, hard. 

“This is real, Dean,” says Cas, as he steps off the porch. 

Dean’s rushing up to him before he even has a chance to process everything, then he’s wrapping Cas up in his arms and crushing him against his chest, digging his chin almost painfully into Cas’s shoulder. 

Cas’s hands pat lightly on his back and when he speaks, Dean feels it in his chest more than he hears it. “I missed you too.”

Dean gives Cas another squeeze before shoving him away to hold him at arm’s length. “Where’ve you been, you asshole?”

Cas tilts his head again, brow scrunching. “If I’d known you were going to insult me…”

“I’ve been waiting, Cas. Three, no, _four_ whole friggin’ days!” Dean snaps. 

Cas shakes his head, the corners of his mouth curling up in amusement. “I—I had some thinking to do,” he says.

“Thinking?” Now, _that_ stops Dean in his tracks. He gestures between them. “Like… About me? This?” 

“A little bit, yes,” Cas admits, twisting the battered hem of his T-shirt in his hands. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again for a very long time. And, as I’m sure you remember, our last conversation wasn’t exactly a happy one.” 

“That’s not an excuse!” Dean claws his hands through his hair. “You know how miserable I’ve been since—since all that?”

Cas drops his hands with a sigh and smooths down the front of his shirt. “I mean… I’m sorry my sacrifice was hard on you. I’d never wished for it to be a burden you had to carry.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Dean says, tugging his hands out of his hair. This isn’t going well at all. “I mean, if you’d given me a choice I wouldn’t have let you go.”

Cas frowns. “You couldn’t have stopped me, Dean. The plan was set in motion long before that moment in the Bunker dungeon.”

Dean takes a step forward, bridging the gap between them until they’re nearly toe to toe. He reaches out, catching Cas by the wrist. “I mean, I wouldn’t have let you go.” He squeezes just to underline the point. 

Cas shakes his head. “You wouldn’t have survived,” he says, though he keeps letting Dean hold on.

Dean slides his hand down until he can lace his fingers with Cas’s. “I know.”

“Dean, no. You _had_ to live,” Cas says, squeezing Dean’s hand. He digs his bare toes in the dirt.

“I tried,” Dean says, looking down at their interlocked fingers. “I’m always such a mess when you’re gone, but this time. This time I really tried. I wanted to live a life you would’ve been proud of.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to do that for very long,” Cas says. “I wish you’d had more time.”

“Me too,” Dean says, flicking his eyes away from their hands. He reaches up and scrubs his palm over his face. “It doesn’t seem fair, does it? Heaven’s perfect, we got everything we could possibly dream of. Everything’s as easy as pie. But it’s not quite home.”

“I made this place for you,” Cas says, the hint of hurt creeping into his tone. 

“I know you did,” Dean says, finally forcing himself to look at Cas through the gauze of tears. “And I’m so grateful you did. I just wish… God, Cas, I don’t know. I wish we could’ve—I wanted—”

Cas nods like he understands and he tugs his hand free of Dean’s. For a moment, Dean’s scared he’s going to leave again, Cas is angry that Dean’s rejected this gift and he’s going to flap away or something. He braces himself for it. 

But he doesn’t. Dean feels his hands on his face, pulling him closer, the tip of his nose bumping into Dean’s. His hands find the dip of Cas’s back and he tugs him into his chest, fitting him there perfectly like a puzzle piece slotting into place.

When Cas’s lips brush over Dean’s it’s like everything and nothing he’s ever imagined. It’s a hundred times better than any true love’s kiss he’s ever read about. It’s infinitely better than that dry, dead, desperate press of lips had been, all those years ago. He feels something inside him shaking off dust and surging to life, and maybe that’s what the stories had been trying to tell him. Maybe this feeling is what all those old fairytales have been trying to capture all this time. 

He feels like all the windows inside him have been thrown open and all the curtains have been torn down, and sunlight is gleaming through every inch of his soul. 

Cas steps back, breaking the kiss, breaking the connection. “Was that okay?” 

Dean curls his finger in the tattered collar of Cas’s shirt and tugs him back in. “I missed you,” he says.

“I know. I missed you too.” Cas tilts his head up and brushes his lips gently over the corner of Dean’s mouth. “I was willing to wait forever to see you again, Dean… I wish I’d had to wait longer.”

Dean wraps his arms around Cas and closes his eyes, pressing his chin into his shoulder. “Thank you, Cas. For this. For everything.” He turns his head slightly, brushing a gentle kiss into the side of his neck. 

He feels Cas’s mouth pressing a kiss into his hair as his hands stroke down his back, lingering over the tender spot where the rebar had done him in. His touch is soothing as something warm—his grace, Dean realizes—flows through the thin cotton of Dean’s shirt into his skin. The persistent ache that’s been buried deep in his bones his entire life falls away like discarded clothing. 

“I love you,” Cas murmurs softly, so soft and quiet Dean wonders if he was even meant to hear it.

Dean pulls back, gazes into Cas’s eyes, and tries to muster all the courage he can find. He’s never really been good with words, but now he can’t help but wonder if that’s simply because he’s never really tried when he wasn’t staring death right in the eye. He’d managed to get out a pretty good speech to Sammy, but he probably wouldn’t have been able to say all of that if he hadn’t been about to die.

Now he’s got eternity at his fingertips, and—if he feels like being honest with himself, which he so rarely does—the love of his life standing in front of him, watching him expectantly. 

He should tell—needs to tell—Cas how he feels. 

“You deserve more. You always have,” is what he does manage to say. 

“Dean?” Cas says. 

“I can’t tell you what you deserve to hear,” Dean says, blinking away at the sudden sting of salt in his eyes. “I’m no good at it. Any of it. You deserve someone who’ll tell you every waking minute of every single day how much they—how much I—”

“I’ve made peace with it,” says Cas, which almost sounds kind of backhanded, except he’s smiling kindly, his tone wry and his eyes crinkled at the corners. 

“Dammit, Cas. You can’t go lettin’ me off the hook,” Dean rasps past a catch in his throat. 

“Why not?” Cas asks. “I know how you feel.”

“You do?” Dean scrubs at his face again but the wetness keeps spilling down his cheeks, like he’s sprung a damned leak. 

“I always have,” says Cas. “I could always feel when you were angry at me, when you were so furious it felt like hatred—”

“Cas,” Dean starts, an apology dancing on the tip of his tongue, but Cas shuts him up with a steely blue glare.

“And I felt tenderness too. Softness,” Cas continues, slipping his hand away from Dean’s to stroke his fingertips over the back of his wrist. “I came to realize it meant _mine_ and _family_. Longing, too. And there was always a current of grief threaded through the softness, the tenderness and the longing that I could never quite untangle. Not until the end, when I had to leave you. When I looked into your eyes, I finally realized what it all meant.”

“What did you realize?” Dean asks, though somewhere, deep down inside, he knows.

“You’ve never been able to love without the fear of loss,” Cas says. He reaches out, placing his palm over Dean’s chest. “When you love something it gets taken away. When you ask someone to stay, they leave.”

Dean reaches up and closes his fingers around Cas’s wrist. “Will you stay?”

Cas cocks his head and smiles a soft, tiny smile that cracks something open in Dean’s chest. “If that’s what you want, I will,” he says. “I wanted to stay the last time you asked. I would have, if it’d been my choice to make.”

“I know you would’ve,” Dean says. A light, springlike breeze riffles its fingers through his hair. “I’m asking you to stay.”

“Then I’ll stay,” Cas says.

It all seems so simple when he says it like that. _Then I’ll stay,_ as if Dean had never had anything to worry about. Maybe he hadn’t. 

Dean grabs him by the collar of his T-shirt and jerks him close, the soft fabric tearing at the seams, and seals this promise with another kiss.


End file.
